Search results for: "Form"
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- Collecting Your Tools… When are they useful? Where are they useful? We hear that views are one of the mental fermentations, views are one of the forms of attachment. Well, does this mean we shouldn’t have views? Well, no, how could anyone live without views? If you try to deny that you have views, you’re stuck in denial. The views go underground where you can …
- Working Ourselves Free… Then work on the subtler breath sensations in the body, patterns of tension, say, in the chest, in the shoulders, the back, the legs, the hips, because that’s a form of breath energy as well. Think of everything relaxing all the way out to the pores. Every pore. Think of the body as a big sponge, with all the pores open, and see …
- Feed the Hungry Mind… Karaṇīya, “what should be done.” There’s a verb form that ends in -attabbo, -attabbaṃ: katabbo, this “should be done.” Dātabbo, this “should be given.” Sikkhitabbaṃ, this “should be trained in.” Should, should should. The Buddha treats us as active beings. He’s simply teaching us how to act in new ways, so that eventually we get to a place where we don’t …
- Immediate Knowledge… This is where intention and feeling and attention and perception—all those factors of name and form—all meet. Even though you may not be able to parse them out yet, at least you know that all the important things you need to know are right here. Try to make this “right here” the basis of whatever other certainty you’re going to try …
- Seclusion… So if you catch the mind leaning into the future, wondering what’s next, or leaning back into the past, longing for what’s gone, remember that that’s a form of non-seclusion as well. The Buddha once said that if the mind is without anticipation of the future, without longing after the past, it’s freed up a lot of its most …
- Patience & Hope… In his own case, in his awakening he thought back many, many lifetimes, thousands and thousands of eons—thousands and thousands of universes, actually, forming and then falling away—back so far that he said that the beginning point is not only unknowable, it’s also inconceivable. In the course of that long, long time, you’ve probably done lots of things, you’ve …
- Staying Grounded… If bubbles do form, you don’t have to follow them. After all, the Buddha doesn’t say not to think at all, just don’t go inhabiting your thought worlds. Try to gain some control over your thoughts. And especially watch out for the thoughts that tend to get involved in conflict—the thoughts that begin with, “I am the thinker.” So, what …
- Appropriate Attention… All these forms of craving are causes of suffering, but as the Buddha said, we go everywhere with them. They’re our companions. We think they’re our friends. Ajaan Suwat used to make the comment that we have everything backwards. We think that craving is our friend and that suffering is our enemy. But if craving is our friend, it’s the kind …
- Values… to find a true happiness, to develop all the good qualities of mind that at the moment you have only in a rudimentary form, or potential form, to try to actualize them. In other words, it’s not a matter of pretending to be something that you aren’t, but simply realizing that you do have a potential to make something more of yourself …
- The Buddha’s Shoulds… In some cases, it was in the form of the rules, like the rules in the Vinaya. In other cases, there were more general principles about how certain actions lead to happiness, and other actions lead to long-term suffering. Based on that, you can decide; he gives you principles for deciding. And he attacked any teaching that would not provide you with those …
- Family Ties… Now in some forms of Buddhism, they take that as a reflection for developing goodwill and compassion for everybody. But in the original teaching, the Buddha used it for another purpose entirely. He said thinking about that should give rise to a desire to gain release. In other words, enough of all this! I’ve been working on a translation of the Udana, which …
- One Person… You see satellite pictures of hurricanes forming off the coast of Africa and then moving up across the Atlantic, sometimes hitting land, sometimes staying over the ocean. Those winds off the coast of Africa: Are they the same molecules as the winds, say, off the coast of Florida? Well, no. But there’s a pattern that moves and changes and can do a lot …
- Gratitude to Things… There’s suffering involved in all of our material possessions in one form or another. So this spurs you even further: Can you get the mind to a point where it doesn’t have to come back and use material things again, again and again? The simple fact of our being born means that we come in with a huge gaping hole: the need …
- A Gift of Well-Being… It helps you realize that there are forms of happiness in this world that are not zero-sum games—i.e., you gain, somebody else loses, or they gain and you lose. This is something where both sides gain. It’s the same with virtue. When you abstain from unskillful behavior, it’s a gift. You can make the promise to yourself and keep …
- Character… The perfection of renunciation, when you learn to give up certain pleasures for more solid pleasures, more solid forms of well-being: This is going to be really helpful in the duty of abandoning the cause for suffering. We crave the things we like, so to abandon our craving, we need to have experience in saying No to some of our favorite pleasures outside …
- Observe Yourself in Action… How does a becoming form? Even before there’s a sense of I or me doing this in a particular world, there will be events in the mind. When we talk about them, they seem abstract because we’re so used to talking in terms of becoming, but they’re really pretty simple and immediate. There are events in the mind, and you can …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… Some forms of exercise that used to strengthen the body actually become bad for it. So you have to be very careful, while at the same time realizing that your true wealth lies in the mind. Are you stashing wealth into the mind? Or are you squandering your mental wealth and replacing it with sand and broken feathers? Are you trading candy for gold …
- Karma for Freedom… They can form a path to the end of suffering. So, this is karma for freedom. Try to have that image in mind every time you hear the word “karma,” because in the Buddha’s teaching, that’s what it is.
- Little Things… But then as the creeper grows bigger and bigger, it finally forms a canopy over the whole tree, pulls down the major limbs, and destroys the tree. That’s when the deva realized why her friends were so concerned. This is one of the reasons why you have to be careful about little things, because sometimes they’re seeds that can grow. At the …
- The Power of Your Actions… There’s the form of the body, and that’s an activity in the sense that you have to consciously keep reminding yourself that there is a body here—because as the breath gets really comfortable, it begins to blur out. The sense of where the body begins, where it ends, where the surface is—that begins to disappear. But for the time being …
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